One story breaking in the UK concerns the right to choose how you want to die.
I've been following it since it first appeared as an interview in a magazine and have watched as it has 'topsied' it's way round the global media.
I think, last time I look, it had morphed into 'Execute the Elderly' - which, quite frankly, was NOT what the story was about at all.
In a recent interview, a British philosopher explored the idea that we should be allowed to actively choose to die, if that is what we want. She was not talking about suicide brought about by depression or grief.
She was talking about extending the power of 'living wills' or 'advance directives' to accommodate your wishes if you became incapacitated, physically or mentally.
At the moment, these documents, drawn up well before any mental impairment takes place, are a valuable aid to doctors and relatives who might have to make a decision about the continuation of treatment or the application of 'heroic measures' to sustain life.
You can state, in these documents, that you do not wish to be resusitated or be artificially kept alive if, in your opinion, your quality of life thereafter, would be far below that which you would consider tolerable.
Now - before everyone starts yelling, consider this..
What YOU consider intolerable, might be another persons habitual way of life, and they might be very happy indeed, thank you very much.
The ultra fit athlete might consider a life confined to a bed, paralysed from the neck down, with only a tv for amusement, completely insufferable.
For a couch potato, it might sound like an alternative lifestyle.
However, this philosopher felt that there should be the right to ask to go further in these documents - that you should have the right to ask to be 'put to sleep' - killed, if you will - if your life changes so that to you, any point in carrying on, has gone.
Furthermore, that whoever did the deed should not be subject to the force of law because they were carrying out your will.
There was also an argument that if you felt you had become a burden on your family, had begun to have a detrimental effect on their lives, or (in the UK) a burden on the finite resources of the National Health Service, then you should also be able to leave life in a manner of your choosing, and at a time of your choosing.
All highly controversial ideas, and being debated to various degrees of fierceness over here. One of the important things to note is that she was NOT saying that families should make the decision for you - your opinion, your desires and CHOICE, should be clearly spelled out in a document drawn up legally, while you were of sound mind and under no pressure.
Opinion seems to be split roughly 50/50. Some see it as tantamount to death squads sweeping through old folks homes - others see it as a final dignity granted to you or someone you love very much. There's not much room for a half way house.
Again, before you all start yelling, no-one is talking about putting people who are currently alive, ill, suffering from dementia, handicapped or with any other health issues, to sleep, in the way you would a favourite pet.
No-one should be discussing that, because that is not the argument.
The argument is whether anyone currently mentally fit and completely competent, who is considering making a living will, could define in that will, the conditions under which they would prefer to be dead - and please, could the medical profession make it so for them?
Also, if a person DID NOT MAKE such a living will, then naturally their wishes, should they become incapacitated and unable to express an opinion, could not be known on the subject, and they would be treated and kept alive as far as was possible.
For a country like the UK, where everyone contributes to a national health care system, choices have to be made every single day about who to treat, and who to allow to die. That's happening now, and it doesn't seem to cause the same storm.
There can't be a week that passes without a story about Mrs A, mother of two young children who can't get a new cancer drug which might extend her life by a year or so because the local NHS trust deems it uneconomical - too expensive for the benefit received. Try telling that to Mrs A. Or then we have Mr D, who has had to take another mortgage on his house in order to pay for two years treatment that someone in the next authority is getting on the NHS due to variations in the policies across the UK. Socialist medicine is a wonderful thing - if you have a heart attack in the street, or an anyeurism in the bath - you will be operated on by good surgeons and not presented with a bill at the end of your stay. That's a given. BUT, as previously said, resources are finite, and decisions about where the money is spent is a subject everyone has an opinion about. There really is no easy answer. Some people have to die so that others can live. But who?
In the US, I guess it's simpler. You pay vast amounts of money for health insurance and pray you stay healthy. If you become ill, when the insurance runs out..... what happens next seems to be up to how resourceful your family is or how good your powers of recovery are.
I guess once it's all gone, you just die.
So maybe, in the US, you don't need living wills, or maybe you do. Maybe you too would want them to include a desire to be put to sleep so that you don't become a burden - not to the state, but to your family. Most of us have family who will willingly sacrifice large parts of their own lives to look after us if we dropped into a senile state. That's great. But I would hate to break my family financially. And I would HATE for my kids to have to give up years of their lives looking after me. I'm not talking about checking in a few times a week. I mean look after me, bathe me, change me, clean my face after a meal, feed me. I don't want that - for me or for them. And there's the money too. To have the house I worked hard to buy, the savings I gathered to leave to my kids to give them a kick start, all used up keeping me in watery soup and incontinence pads would be intolerable to me. The attacks from the agencies who deal with the demented elderly have been vicious - but I look at it this way. Why should their opinion about my end outweigh my own? Why should I be obliged to wander into the great solitude that is dementia, and stay there for years, suffering all the indignities that accompany that dreadful condition, simply because THEY say so? I resent that arrogance more than the alternative.
That's why, whatever your personal feelings about the subject, the debate is valuable, and should be discussed. Because the answers - like your feelings and my feeling - are personal. As would each and every decision be.
I get all the sci fi references - the Logans Runs, the Solyent Greens - but there MUST be value in having the discussion.
In the end, there is only choice. That's the last dignity left to us. Perhaps best make that choice while you can, and not have someone else make it after you can't.